


Samhain

by Lasgalendil



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: American Gods Inspired, Anglo-Irish Relations, Animal Death, Arnie Roth - Freeform, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Child Death, Deaf Steve Rogers, Gen, Halloween, Imaginary Friends, Irish Sarah Rogers, Irish Steve Rogers, Kid Fic, POV Sarah Rogers, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9198479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: Steve Rogers has an imaginary friend. His mother knows better.(The American Gods-inspired AU oneshot where Bucky is a Púca.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleblackfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bukavac](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839692) by [littleblackfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox). 



> "I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,  
> Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:  
> Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,  
> A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;  
> And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,  
> Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."
> 
> —A Midsummer Nights’ Dream III, 1, 922

Sorcha should have known better. She'd done this to herself.  
  
She and Stiofán carved the turnips, and he’d cried, a little, at their awful faces. But this was Samhain, and even though they weren’t in the Old Country she remembered doing so as a child. But her boy turned bright blue eyes to her, and so Sorcha bought a pumpkin, which smiled merrily—if a little clumsily—on the windowsill.  
  
She’d brought home a hen as well. A small, wretched thing, old and unlaying, fit only for the stewpot. Wrung its thin neck, plucked the feathers. Sprinkled the blood on the door frame.  
  
“Is it Passover?” her Stiofán asked her, still sniffling. Her gentle boy disapproved of killing.  
  
“Passover?” Sorcha asked. He had learned of such things in Sunday school last Easter. Moses. The lamb’s blood. The Exodus from Egypt. And her curious boy had even asked to spend Pesach with the Roth’s down the hall with their strange prayer shawls and long payot. Spent the days after Lent with little Arnie, counting the Omer. “No, my love. It’s Samhain.”  
  
“For the Angel of Death?” Stiofán asked, afraid. The Angel had come for his brother, Mathúin, she’d told him, and carried him up to heaven. Her first boy had been stillborn, but baptized. He had gone to Heaven, like David’s son. He would not go to Hell, not wander the earth as a will-o’-the-wisp. Sorcha had made sure.  
  
“For the spirits, love.”  
  
They went to mass for All Hallows Day, sang to Maria and Jesu, as a good Catholic should, but that night she told her Stiofán stories, whispered them to him while he fell asleep, of the Old Folk, the Old Country, of the ghasts and souls and Aos Sí that haunted the night of Samhain. Stiofán fell asleep, wheezing slightly, and she stayed up to watch him—guard him, perhaps—although it was needless. The lanterns and blood would chase any spirits away. And they were here in America now. The bustling, hurried streets of Brooklyn, lined with the tired, the poor, the huddled masses longing to breathe free. It was no place for the Old Country. The Old Folk. Such things had been left behind.  Next year her Stiofán would even go to school, and she’d stop using Gaelic. Speak, sing to him only in English, though it pained her.  
  
Sorcha fell asleep. And that night the Púca came.  
  
In the morning the milk had found its way into the icebox all on its own. Sorcha poured a glass for Stiofán. For his bent and brittle bones. That night she poured another for the Púca.  
  
In the morning, the glass was empty.  
  
“You must be lonely,” Sorcha said, when the Púca appeared the next night. “To be here. In the New World.”  
  
“I saw the Great War, and the Wars before,” the Púca sang, his ears and long tail twitching. He was a boy, a bright, brown boy, no older, perhaps, than her little Stiofán, a smidge of dirt across his nose. “Watched the corn wither and come no more. Saw the suns set and the Stripes and Stars rise. I was here before your chimneys that choke the skies.”

He had come, then. Long ago, Sorcha knew. Some indentured servant remembering the Old Ways. And then they'd been forgotten. Then she'd lit the lantern. Spilled the blood. She'd meant to keep the memory of spirits away, but living and lonely they had come.  
  
“Who do you talk to, mama?” her Stiofán asked, rising and rubbing crusted eyes.  
  
“No one, my love. No one,” Sorcha lied. “Go back to sleep.”

The Púca lashed its tail.  
  
“But who is the boy, mama?” Stiofán pointed. “Who is your friend?”  
  
_That is no boy, my child. That creature is not a friend._  
  
Be cautious. Be courteous.  
  
“Púca. Pixie,” Sorcha named him again in English. “Puck.”  
  
Her Stiofán had had ear infections as an infant. So many he was near to deaf, the doctors feared would grow up dumb. But her dear brave boy still tried to speak, every word. “Bucky,” Stiofán said softly. “Buck.”  
  
_P-u-c-a_ , Sorcha signed. _P._  
  
“Bucky don’t speak sign, ma,” Stiofán huffed. “C’mon,” he said, and grabbed the spirit by the hand. “Let’s play.”  


...

  
The next year at school the teachers spoke of Stiofán’s imaginary friend. Such things would fade in time, they said. At the orphanage where Stiofán slept and ate while Sorcha was on the wards, the Sisters wished to perform an exorcism. The neighbors complained of a poltergeist. But at home, those few and fleeting days so far between when she was with her Stiofán, the Púca—“Bucky”—made himself known.  
  
But Stiofán was growing older, now. A Púca could no longer be his playmate. “It is best,” Sorcha said— cautiously, courteously—“that he forget you.”  
  
“You did not forget me yet," the Púca said. “The spray of blood, the lanterns lit.”  
  
“I am not a child,” Sorcha replied.  
  
In the morning, the milk on the step was spoilt.


End file.
